There is No White Race

In the Mass Shooting in Allen, Texas, eight people died. The shooter was a Hispanic man named Mauricio Garcia with a neo-nazi & white supremacy ideology. A social media page from the shooter shows disdain for women and blacks. Photos of Nazi imagery, including an image of a person with a Swastika and Schutzstaffel (SS). On that social media page, he shows the content the shooter watched. Libs of TikTok, going so far as to shout them out for inspiration on a post. Tim Pool is a “centrist” right-wing commentator. Nick Fuentes, a prominent White Supremacist & Holocaust denier. Matt Walsh, a self-proclaimed “Theocratic Fascist.”

A deflection that Right-Wing individuals are using is the fact he was seemingly a Hispanic White Supremacy as a way to dismiss the evidence of his right-wing beliefs as they see a Hispanic White Supremacist as oxymoronic and a way to take attention away from the trans shooter in Nashville. Tim Pool tweeted in response to the social media discoveries, “I’m assuming they posted the fake Russian profile in response to the fact that a trans person shot kids, and they are terrified.” Even Twitter owner Elon Musk is seemingly in agreement with the ties being a part of a grand conspiracy as he replied to a member of Tim Pool’s media team whose response to the profile was “It’s a Psyop, and it’s not even good,” Elon replied with “This gets weirder by the moment.” 

People seemingly do not understand the concept of the white race and its history. The white race is an ever-changing group. Based on their perceived race and European heritage using the social construct known as “white.” A construct that has changed with time and has been used to defend oppressive and discriminatory frameworks.

White Origins

Let us examine the “white” race. Its original incarnation is Anglo-Saxons. Anglo-Saxons migrated to England from Europe in the 5th century. This idea of white carries on for centuries, through the 1700s. Benjamin Franklin believed in the traditional understanding of the white race.

 “[W]hy should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into our Settlements, and by herding together establish their Language and Manners to the Exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion. Which leads me to add one Remark: That the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth. ” Franklin’s understanding of who is white and who is not is vastly different from today.

Race Courts

A mere 40 years later, the United States had begun establishing who and what is white. The Naturalization Act of 1790 established that only free whites of good character could become naturalized citizens in the United States. To gain citizenship, a person must be white. The court had the power to determine a person’s race. The first racial prerequisite case would occur in 1878, ruling that people of Chinese descent are not white. The first case of a group gaining the white race title was in 1897. The ruling held that Mexicans are white in re Rodriguez. The court system was extremely inconsistent with its rulings. Proof that the white race is not a thing but merely a concept. Numerous groups of people gained and lost whiteness, according to the courts. Asian Indians were not white in 1909 in re Balsara. Asian Indians became white in 1910 in US v Dolla. They lost the privilege of being white in 1917 when it was held that they are not white in re Sadar Bhagwab Singh. This ruling was held until 1919 when Asian Indians became white again. They held the title of white until 1923 when the ruling of not white came out again. Since then, under the courts of racial prerequisite cases, Asian Indians remained not white. Arabs are considered white as the last case Ex parte Mohriez, held that Arabians as white in 1944. 

Non-Whites

Irish were not considered white The Irish were depicted as subhuman. Lazy, insular, and dirty drunks who were criminals and bred like rats. Italians were not white. The economist Robert F. Forester wrote, questioning the anti-Italian sentiment, in 1924, “in a country where the distinction between white man and black is intended as a distinction of value … it is no compliment to the Italian to deny him his whiteness, but that actually happens with considerable frequency.” There were no white Hungarians and other Central European nations. In Pennsylvania, white employees preferred unemployment to “hunky jobs.” Not willing to stoup down to their level. The Polish were not white. They were violent, ugly, and dumb. At one point deemed terrorists like Muslims after 9/11 because of the assassination of President McKinley in 1901. 

All of these groups later became white as a means to box out other minority groups like Asians, Blacks, and Hispanics. Typically, if these groups actively suppressed lower rungs on the ladder, they got the title of “white.” The “white race” is an exclusionary group that is always changing to include new groups of people who will help maintain the majority in society. Hispanics are likely to be the next group to be added to the white race, or as the Texas shooter posted, he had the option between acting black or white supremacy “I will stick with white supremacy.”

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